How cool would it be to open a brewery, right?
Well, the conversation didn't go exactly like that, but it was along those lines. And surprisingly, it wasn't me who brought it up, it was Kylie (my wife).
We were sitting in a brewery in America at the time. I can't really remember which one it was, but we were on a holiday travelling through a number of states in June 2019.
As we sat drinking a beer and enjoying the surroundings, she said to me, "Would you like to have your own place, a brewery, at some point?"
And that got me thinking.
Weeks later, when we were back from the holiday, still thinking about the trip (or the next one to come), I started thinking more about it. Then I started looking into it, investigating as much as I could think of that we could possibly need, as well as what it was all going to cost.
I remember saying to Kylie after a bit of investigating, "I think we can do this."
"Do bloody what?" she replied.
"A brewery, our own brewery. I've been looking into it and I think we can pull it off."
She looked back at me with a bit of a blank look on her face, possibly thinking, "Oh shit, what idea have I put in his head?"
Anyway, we discussed it more and decided together that it probably wasn't the right time.
I sat on the idea, parked it away for a rainy day. But that rainy day came pretty quickly. I couldn't stop thinking about it.
It must have been less than a month later when we discussed it again. With my powers of persuasion, I talked her into it (well, it wasn't hard, I think secretly she was still thinking about it too).
Okay, so we've made the decision. Now what do we do?
We need to look into this further, get some firm advice, talk to some industry experts, find out what works and what doesn't. What permits do we need? What area do we try to find property in?
The list was big and kept growing.
Luckily, after a little research, I found out the IBA (Independent Brewers Association) BrewCon conference was being held in Melbourne. A little more research uncovered some offshoot information sessions, one of which was all about starting up a new brewery. Perfect!
The information session was held by an equipment supplier and included talks from some industry experts. It covered a lot of information, including things we hadn't even added to the list yet, cost estimates and plenty more.
I walked away from the information session with a better idea of what we needed. Over the following weeks, I followed up with some contacts from the session, which helped us get our budget and requirements list together.
So now we know what we need (sort of), we know what it's going to cost (maybe).
Where do we start?